While it's true that PC games retail is generally weak - all of the money is in a select group of casual, Sims products and MMO's - your assessment of the console side is rather off. Attach rates vary by system, but it's well north of five games.
That may very well be, but I could've sworn someone spouted out that figure. I'd need to see some studies or something before I thought otherwise; we have to remember that our immediate group here is very different from the casual gamer. Heck, most of us probably buy at least one game a week, maybe 5 per month, easily.
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I don't think anyone is calling Joe Average stupid, but the fact of the matter is is that the dominant platform is nearly always better for those who don't wish to get down to the nitty gritty details and putting lots of work into it, because the most stuff will be designed for it. In the case of PC's, that's dealing with Windows over Linux. I don't think there's any way to argue against that. The path of least resistance is where most people (myself included) prefer to go, and in the vast majority of cases that's with a Windows-based system. As a secondary system, really anything Web-enabled and able to install browser extensions is more than adequate, and that certainly includes anything running Linux. That's probably Linux's future and greatest strength, being in a mass of secondary and tertiary systems and products. Eventually the OS won't matter and the office suite won't matter, but that time is no time soon. Old paradigms die hard.
That may be true, but the habits have to form. It becomes a bit circular if you just say IBM PC and compatibles became the standard because they were so popular. You can say that about Microsoft, too--they are popular because everybody has it--but it still doesn't really explain why people were willing to move to DOS and then Windows in the first place. Somehow, IBM PC had a critical mass that allowed for enough people to adopt the platform that it made sense to try to clone it and start competing for that userbase's dollars. I could be wrong, but I don't see any real advantage the IBM PC had over the competition in terms of usability or compatibility when it came out. Of course it did have advantages for business and serious apps, but I don't really see how those would have been that big of a deal to Joe Smoe.
I think the critical era was really in the mid-80s when you had systems out with colorful GUIs and multimedia out the wazoo, and the clones were still chugging along lucky to have anything beyond monochrome and pc speaker. There's a ten year gap between the first Macintosh and Windows 95, for instance, and I definitely didn't see a mass migration from DOS to 3.1 (though your experience may be different). Heck, I remember people refusing to go Windows 95 and there are STILL people who insist that DOS is far superior (of course most of those have now moved on to Linux and extol its shell until your ears fall off).
So, anyway, what I'm saying is that there was a huge gap there in usability and at least a reduced gap in compatibility. My guess is that if you were to tell someone in 1985 that the Atari ST, Amiga, and Macintosh would all fail horribly compared to MS-DOS clones in every sector--even though they wouldn't get a true GUI-based OS for ten years--they would have laughed at you. Personally, I would have found it much more plausible that Macintosh would become the standard.
The one thing that always comes to mind when I think about stuff like this is the QWERTY keyboard. That keyboard arrangement was designed to slow you down, because when it was invented, there was a problem with people typing so fast that it jammed up their typewriters or some such. However, out of force of habit, we've maintained that layout, even though other layouts like the Dvorack are far better. That case really kind of makes it clear what you're saying about habits dying hard. But they obviously do sometimes change, or we'd still be using typewriters and not computers. ;)
While it's true that PC games retail is generally weak - all of the money is in a select group of casual, Sims products and MMO's - your assessment of the console side is rather off. Attach rates vary by system, but it's well north of five games.
That may very well be, but I could've sworn someone spouted out that figure. I'd need to see some studies or something before I thought otherwise; we have to remember that our immediate group here is very different from the casual gamer. Heck, most of us probably buy at least one game a week, maybe 5 per month, easily.
I don't think anyone is calling Joe Average stupid, but the fact of the matter is is that the dominant platform is nearly always better for those who don't wish to get down to the nitty gritty details and putting lots of work into it, because the most stuff will be designed for it. In the case of PC's, that's dealing with Windows over Linux. I don't think there's any way to argue against that. The path of least resistance is where most people (myself included) prefer to go, and in the vast majority of cases that's with a Windows-based system. As a secondary system, really anything Web-enabled and able to install browser extensions is more than adequate, and that certainly includes anything running Linux. That's probably Linux's future and greatest strength, being in a mass of secondary and tertiary systems and products. Eventually the OS won't matter and the office suite won't matter, but that time is no time soon. Old paradigms die hard.
That may be true, but the habits have to form. It becomes a bit circular if you just say IBM PC and compatibles became the standard because they were so popular. You can say that about Microsoft, too--they are popular because everybody has it--but it still doesn't really explain why people were willing to move to DOS and then Windows in the first place. Somehow, IBM PC had a critical mass that allowed for enough people to adopt the platform that it made sense to try to clone it and start competing for that userbase's dollars. I could be wrong, but I don't see any real advantage the IBM PC had over the competition in terms of usability or compatibility when it came out. Of course it did have advantages for business and serious apps, but I don't really see how those would have been that big of a deal to Joe Smoe.
I think the critical era was really in the mid-80s when you had systems out with colorful GUIs and multimedia out the wazoo, and the clones were still chugging along lucky to have anything beyond monochrome and pc speaker. There's a ten year gap between the first Macintosh and Windows 95, for instance, and I definitely didn't see a mass migration from DOS to 3.1 (though your experience may be different). Heck, I remember people refusing to go Windows 95 and there are STILL people who insist that DOS is far superior (of course most of those have now moved on to Linux and extol its shell until your ears fall off).
So, anyway, what I'm saying is that there was a huge gap there in usability and at least a reduced gap in compatibility. My guess is that if you were to tell someone in 1985 that the Atari ST, Amiga, and Macintosh would all fail horribly compared to MS-DOS clones in every sector--even though they wouldn't get a true GUI-based OS for ten years--they would have laughed at you. Personally, I would have found it much more plausible that Macintosh would become the standard.
The one thing that always comes to mind when I think about stuff like this is the QWERTY keyboard. That keyboard arrangement was designed to slow you down, because when it was invented, there was a problem with people typing so fast that it jammed up their typewriters or some such. However, out of force of habit, we've maintained that layout, even though other layouts like the Dvorack are far better. That case really kind of makes it clear what you're saying about habits dying hard. But they obviously do sometimes change, or we'd still be using typewriters and not computers. ;)
Matt Barton, Managing Editor
Location: St. Cloud, Minnesota, USA
Email: matt@armchairarcade.com